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She brought the first opponent down with slices to the backs of his knees and a violent slash across the throat.

He choked on his own blood.

The second man baulked at the brutal death of his comrade, presenting Thea with an opening she couldn’t resist. Twirling on her toes, she parried, dodging his poorly placed strike and shoving her sword up in between his ribs, enjoying the shock in his eyes. She wrenched the blade away, spraying red everywhere before she cleaved his head from his body.

The third man raised his hands in surrender. Thea considered him with a tilt of her head, before she looped her blade around in a powerful, two-handed cut to his neck.

There was no room for mercy here.

She moved with the grace of a dancer and the speed of a predator, her blade almost too fast to see as she lunged and feinted, slashing through each man as though they were sacks of grain. Her magic hummed within, crackled at her fingertips, but she kept it leashed. Instead, she used the dark corners and shadows of the warehouse to her advantage, taking her opponents unawares and basking in the skills she’d learnt as a dancing alchemist and as a shieldbearer of Thezmarr.

Men were screaming.

And it was a song whose notes she revelled in.

Thea left a trail of blood and bodies in her wake as she made her way around the warehouse, the mercenaries still coming for her. Whether it was pride or desperation that drove them, she didn’t care. She simply took them down, one by one, two by two, barely breaking a sweat, barely making a sound.

Not a single one was a match for her, and she relished that new kind of power at her fingertips: the power of violence, not magic.

‘Please!’ someone called from a dark corner. ‘Let us live!’

But she lost herself to the call of death, swinging her blade as an extension of herself. Long gone were the leering expressions and arrogant smirks. In their place was pure, unadulterated terror.

They feared her.

And so they should. She was a weapon of her own making, and she would see them crying out for their mothers before the end —

‘Stop!’ someone shouted.

Thea whirled around to see the leader of the mercenaries behind Wilder, pressing Malik’s dagger of Naarvian steel to his cheek.

Wilder was exactly where he’d been the entire time, bound in chains on his chair.

‘I said stop, girl. Or I’ll slice this bastard’s face off.’

Wilder didn’t move an inch. His face was calm, impassive. Until he winked at her.

The man didn’t even register the movement from her, a blur at her hand, before the dagger she held left her fingertips and carved through the air.

And embedded itself in the soft point between the man’s neck and shoulder.

He screamed. The Naarvian steel he’d been clutching clattered to the ground and he staggered back from Wilder, flailing his arms but not daring to pull the dagger from his flesh.

Thea strode towards Wilder. ‘You didn’t want to lend a hand?’ she asked.

‘You had it under control,’ the Warsword replied with a hint of a smile. Then he braced his body against the chains and they broke apart across his broad chest, no match for his Furies-given strength.

‘You couldn’t have done that sooner?’

The chains dropped from Wilder’s powerful body and he grinned openly at her. ‘Told you, you had it under control.’

Thea warred between pride and annoyance for a moment, but Wilder was already stalking towards the whimpering mercenary leader. The Warsword grabbed him by the front of his shirt with one hand and lifted him up into the air, his legs kicking beneath him.

‘If I pull this out,’ he growled, nudging the dagger still embedded in the man’s neck, ‘you’ll bleed to death in seconds. You understand?’

The man made a pitiful noise.

Wilder looked revolted. ‘Good. Tell us who you’re working for.’